German Socialist, and first chancellor of the republican German Reich, born on the 6th of January 1870 at Darkehnen in East Prussia. At an early stage of his career he took up the secretarial work of the German Trades Unions movement and in 1908 became president of the general committee of the Trades Unions of Germany. Elected a member of the old Reichstag in 1912, he was appointed on October 5, 1918, Secretary of State for the Department of Labour in the Government of Prince Max of Baden, the last Government under the old régime. In February 1919 he was appointed Minister of Labour in the republican Government of the German Reich and on June 21st of the same year president of the Ministry which was installed to accept the Peace Treaty of Versailles. The new constitution of the Reich having been enacted, the president of the Ministry resumed, in accordance with its provisions, the old title of chancellor (Reichskanzler) and Bauer was the first to hold this office under the republican régime. He remained chancellor until the Kapp coup of March 1920, when he fled with the president of the Reich, Ebert, and the rest of the Ministry to Dresden and afterwards to Stuttgart. On their return the Ministry was reconstructed and Bauer made way for the second republican chancellor, Hermann Müller, himself becoming for a brief period the Minister of the Treasury (Reichsschatzminister).
